


one thing or another

by afrocurl



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Crossing Timelines, M/M, X-Men First Class Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:39:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Erik was twenty-eight he was told the Internet was full of things he shouldn’t look at. Turns out, that’s true, in more ways than one. However, the kink meme is a saving grace. Truly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one thing or another

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etirabys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etirabys/gifts).



> Written in response to the prompt that the kink meme is found and Charles and Erik troll it, learn a few things and maybe get some sex out of it.
> 
> Many thanks to Jess, Neko and Rei for the beta help.

"Here we are, gents,” the man in a tweed jacket says in front of a very large and well-maintained brownstone.

“Where is here?” Erik asks, curious about more than just the blue box he’d been transported into and then out of.

“Here is New York City. When is 2011.”

“Why?” Charles asks next.

“To save the world from unparalleled damage at the hands of your older selves.” The man pauses, seeming to consider. Then he goes on to add, “It’s like _A Christmas Carol_ , but without the two other ghosts.”

“This makes no sense,” Erik continues, pushing at his temples to ease the tension away.

“Don’t worry--the apartment is paid for through 2015, and in the safe there’s $50,000, which should be good for food and such. I think? I never get the money right,” the younger man replies, snapping his suspenders in appreciation of his work.

“I’ll be back in,” he looks at his watch, “three months to get you both back.

“Just be sure not to meet anyone with your name. That’s tricky business, crossing time-streams.”

*

The sound of heavy, loud laughter echoes through the entire apartment and beyond, and Erik has to stop outside the door before he enters, unsure if he’s interrupting Charles or not. Charles’ time is always his, and always will be, at least after the five discussions and ten fights that they have had together about personal space and boundaries.

There’s also the part where they have to respect time and space. Something that the man in the tweed says matters a great deal. It’s a point that still confuses Erik most days, but he lets that idea pass because it only complicates the world he’s been in (twice now it seems).

“What was that about?” Erik asks, pushing the two bags from his chest onto the small island in the middle of the kitchenette once he finally opens the door.

“Oh, I was just _reading_ something,” Charles replies, a giggle escaping shortly after.

“Reading what?” Erik queries, still curious and nervous about what has his boyfriend laughing so loudly and why he’s laughing like that at four in the afternoon.

“It’s not something you should worry about,” Charles adds, staring intently at the computer screen in front of him, despite his protests that the page is of no interest to Erik. Erik lets out a huff of frustration before inching closer to the small computer station set against the window.

“Then it really is,” Erik adds, knowing just how to get the information from Charles. He pads over to the computer and looks over his boyfriend’s shoulder at the screen.

“What in the HELL is that?” Erik wonders aloud, staring at a nearly white screen with blue blocks highlighting other information.

“It seems to be a site that’s dedicated to prompts, and _fiction_ about us--Alex, Angel, Darwin, Hank, Sean, everyone from 1962, and some from today.”

“What sort of prompts?”

Charles just stares blankly at the screen, the question left unanswered before Erik breaks the silence.

“Charles...” he trails off.

“It depends, actually. There are a few that ask for alternate versions of what happened _then_ ,” Charles replies, eyes still on the screen and decidedly not at the man over his shoulder. Erik takes it as a sign of Charles’ being uncomfortable, but ignores it and leans forward into Charles, knowing the proximity will help to get the ultimate answer he’s looking for.

“There are others that go in a _different_ direction,” Charles finishes quickly to Erik’s shock; he’s impressed that the physical contact is able to get the answer he wants even with Charles’ will. Erik grins in approval at his tactic finally working after weeks of trying.

“What direction is that?” Erik continues, eyes trying to follow along with the tiny print on the screen.

As soon as he’s read one, the knives in the apartment attack the abandoned grocery bags on the island.

*

With Charles gone for the evening, Erik turns his attention back to the computer and the peals of his boyfriend’s laughter that still rang in his memory from earlier. There are few things about being in the same timeline as an older version of himself that make him pause, but anything that had Charles’ attention that much is worth the investigation rather than just reacting with anger at the mental image of Charles in a threesome with Alex and Hank.

Charles, still unaccustomed to modern technology, forgets to clear the browser’s history (or maybe he doesn’t; Erik’s not going to deal with that possibility currently), which Erik smiles at before finding the site Charles had been looking at earlier.

“What the hell is a LiveJournal?” Erik wonders, but moves on as the rest of the page loads and he sees what the hell is going on.

The text on the page says that this is a kink meme, at which Erik raises one eyebrow. It’s not hard to decide that this page (or pages as he sees later) will be filled with things that he’ll want to try later (who knew it was possible to suck and fuck at the same time?). He’s become more aware of the differences between himself and the man named Magneto who has been neutralized by a “Cure” but who has struck fear into the hearts of nearly every US citizen. It is clear, as Erik skims the page, that something similar is going on on here. The entire group of mutants Erik knows have become, for lack of a better word, fetishes. He’s still not accustomed to the attention he had in the 1960s and the attention it seems Magneto relishes now. Magneto is a man who thrives off power and control, forcing others into his submission; Erik is not sure how he’d get to that point, except to know that he likes order and power when it comes to his life.

Reading through the prompts that deal with either Charles or himself, it’s obvious that the fans (some with bizarre names that he can’t decipher and others who hide under the veil of anonymity), are more than a little obsessed with him and Charles and the myriad of things they want them to do together. It’s more than just a stroll in the park as imagined with a photograph of them on the field in Russia: it’s watching what must have been the cause of Professor X and Magneto’s split played out differently so that neither man had a reason to stand in opposition to the other.

As he clicks onto page after page of comments on the screen, Erik finds that these people have taken any and every cliche or trope and turned them into their own personal versions of their lives before Cuba and more than a few after a showdown that seems to be the source of Charles and Erik becoming Professor X and Magneto.

In one, he reads, Erik is a rich aristocrat with a ward who needs to be taught by Charles in some dilapidated manor home. But he’s also been turned into a cat by an angry mutant and seen Charles turned into a partial cat by another. Erik’s brow furrows as the pages go by, mostly because the prompts seem to never end and become variations on themselves after some time.

Skimming over any prompt that features anyone but him and Charles, Erik starts to laugh, as loudly and just as infectiously as Charles’ from earlier.

“You people,” he says to the screen, “are hilarious.

“You think I’d want to sleep with Charles after Logan?” He lets out a cackle through the apartment and hopes that none of the neighbors will wonder about his time without Charles. “Fat chance.”

As he continues to read the prompts, the urge to reply to them takes over. He can’t help but want to chastise some anonymous person for their idea that Erik would ever sleep with a sex addict and Charles at the same time. But, as he goes back to the top of the page to read over everything, he realizes that someone, one of the moderators, will undoubtedly take offense at his disapproval of the prompt. Instead, he ponders how best to annoy the people who visit this site.

His fingers clack against the keyboard before he finally produces this gem to post:

> **Erik/Magneto - time travel - warnings for possible Dub-Con**  
>  Through some work of Howard Stark, Erik, just before the Cuban Missile Crisis is transported into today. Unsure of what to do, he is found by Magneto on the streets of New York.
> 
> Recognizing his younger self, Magneto takes the younger man in.
> 
> Whatever happens next is up to you.

 

*

“How was your night?” Charles asks when he pads into the apartment just before midnight. Erik sits at the computer, his mind occupied by the hours of time he’s just spent looking around that site. Those were hours he could have been using to do research on Magneto; he and Charles both spend time each day learning about their current selves, as they figure out exactly how the Crisis in Cuba led to the two of them working so hard to stay apart.

Feeling better about trying to annoy some people on the kink meme, Erik turns his attention back to the voice at the door.

“Oh, it was fine. Just sat around trying to figure something out.” He smirks to himself, knowing that Charles can’t see his reaction.

*

Looking back through that site the next morning, Erik is surprised to find there are numerous comments back to his prompt, mostly all of them variations “OMG I WANT THIS!” to “+1”, which leaves him with a confused expression on his face. It seems his idea wasn’t such a bad one.

The next three hours he spends looking at the prompts in more detail, and tries to find one that might be worth writing. One catches his attention and he starts to laugh at the idea that comes into his head:

  


>   
> 
> 
> **Erik (Charles/Erik) AU, feral!Erik is on the prowl**  
> 

  


*

When Erik hears Charles open the door hours later, he can’t quite believe that he’s just spent the last five hours trying to write something for that prompt. He’s typed up at least five pages of it, though he’s sure something is missing, not that he’d admit to anyone he wants to write a story about a wild and animalistic version of himself. Certainly not to Charles.

“How was your day?” Erik asks, pushing the thoughts aside so that Charles won’t know how he’s spent the day.

“Not much to report. There’s very little about the Xavier School for the Gifted, and I’m not about to make a trip up to Westchester just to find out more,” Charles says dropping off his bag in the entryway.

“Seems reasonable. What do you feel like for dinner?” Erik asks, logging out of his GMail account to hide the evidence of his afternoon.

*

Two days later, Erik finds a list sitting next to the computer, in Charles’ slightly messy script.

> I top?
> 
> I’m an alcoholic?
> 
> Is Erik really a grouch?

Erik laughs, and knows that Charles has been spending just as much time around that site as he has.

Maybe it’s time to put their time to use _together_.

*

“Charles, will you come here for a minute?” Erik asks from the computer, just as he hears the water stop running in the kitchen.

“What’s wrong, Erik?” Charles asks when he walks into the living room.

“Nothing’s the matter, but I found this list the other day, and well, I wondered about it.” Erik points to the small slip of paper with those notes from days before.

A faint blush colors Charles’ face.

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” Charles admits.

“Well, then I suppose now’s the time I should say I’ve been looking around too.”

Erik takes a few nimble swipes at the keyboard, before opening his email and then a document. “See?” he adds, pointing to a document that looks like the stories that are on the site.

“We really are two of the daftest men on the planet, right?”

“Maybe? But I’m sure that the Internet still loves us,” Erik suggests before he starts to giggle at the image.

It isn’t long before Charles is doing the same thing--the two of them laughing at themselves and their own insecurities.

*

“We’re really going to do this?” Charles asks as he pulls up another chair next to the computer.

“Why not? It seems that everyone on the Internet has something like this for something they love. Why can’t we be self-indulgent like them?” Erik returns, before he opens their Internet browser.

“We’re really going to make this?” Charles wonders aloud again.

“Yes, we are. Because we’re investigating what’s come between Magneto and Prof. X and this seems like a valid way to avoid that _when_ we get back to the 1960s.”

Erik feels the huff of Charles’ breath before he sees the nod of brown hair.

“Okay, so we’re starting at Round 1, right?”

*

>   
> 
> 
> **The Stay Together Drinking Game: How to keep Magneto and Prof. X a Happy Mutant Family**
> 
> Drink at any of the following:
> 
> 1\. Charles tops.  
>  2\. Shower sex.  
>  3\. Charles is an alcoholic.  
>  4\. Erik sheds a single manly tear.  
>  5\. There’s spooning post-sex.  
>  6\. Someone assumes Charles is a sweet/unassuming mutant.  
>  7\. Someone assumes Erik is a scary/violent mutant.  
>  8\. Tony Stark.  
>  9\. Time travel - no matter what.  
>  10\. Sex Pollen.  
>  11\. Threesomes based on movies with guys who look exactly like us.  
>  12\. Erik is secretly good with the “kids”.  
>  13\. Rimming.  
>  14\. Transformations  
>  15\. Fairy tales.

*

Erik brings home two very large cases of Heineken (the only thing that he can manage to stand) once they actually put together a list of things to drink to. It’s clear to Erik that the list is pretty short, compared to the sheer volume of prompts, but he ignores that fact a little longer; knowing there’s a possibility of he and Charles not being together, well, it’s reason enough to drink the night away.

“Ready to go?” he calls, trying to push open the door without breaking any of the bottles at his feet.

“Give me one more second. I’m trying to make sure the room’s safe.”

“We’re just drinking as we read through this site. What’s there that’s _not_ safe?”

“Liquid plus electronics. Be smart, Erik. I’m not about to fry this computer.”

“I’d save it before that happened. You know that.”

Erik hears the laugh from Charles before he sees it, but it stops Erik dead in his tracks. The way that Charles is open, giving into the idea of Erik not destroying a computer because he can, well, it’s magical.

After Erik forces the tops off six bottles, he carries them over to the computer before sitting down.

“Let’s get this party started,” Charles says, tipping his bottle towards Erik’s.

They each pick a round to make it fair, and start working their way through the hundreds of prompts as they go, slowing sipping their beers.

Erik laughs at the moments when they find a prompt about someone else, just imagining what they’ll have to hide when they get back, but it makes the evening pass in easy familiarity.

It’s at the moment when Charles finds a good prompt, though, that Erik wants nothing more than to stop the whole game. He’s been half-hard since they started, admiring the ideas that these people can come up with (he’s really interested to know if sex pollen actually does exist) and watching Charles roll over into another fit of hysterics is enough for him.

His bottle of beer hits the table awkwardly, and Charles startles at the noise.

“What’s wrong?” Charles asks, looking at Erik through large eyes, his pupils dilated from the alcohol.

“Nothing. Just, can we take a break?”

“Of course.”

Erik stares at Charles for a minute, knowing that Charles has been mentally trying to reason through Erik’s request. It takes all his energy not to just push himself towards his boyfriend, but as the expression on Charles’ face grows more more nervous, Erik gives in.

There’s no finesse--not after ten beers and three hours of looking at a _damned website_ , but he doesn’t care.

In seconds, Charles has caught on and returns the kiss in equal measure. Nothing about this isn’t awkward--sitting in two different chair making it nearly impossible to get any grip onto Charles’ hair, but in a moment of clarity, Erik pushes his chair back and forces Charles to follow him onto the floor.

“Oof!” Erik mumbles into Charles’ mouth, just before Charles breaks away and laughs.

“This is why I was prepping,” he says, smiling briefly before moving his mouth to eagerly suck against Erik’s pulse point.

“Excellent work,” Erik adds, taking the time to run his hands into Charles’ hair and bring them closer.

It’s slow work tonight, Erik half realizes, as their hands fumble with their clothes minutes later, but he’ll likely blame the beer and the kink meme for it all.

At the point that he finally frees Charles belt, there’s a mental push from Charles, urging him on. It takes all of three second before Erik’s hand is quickly stripping Charles cock, slow, but a little rough at same time.

“Hmm” is Charles’ only reply.

There’s a quick push, Charles no longer straddling Erik, before Erik’s back to working his hand against Charles, looking for purchase and room.

The feel of Charles’ pants sliding down his hips is all the encouragement Erik needs before his hand speeds up, using the pre-come for added friction. The firmer grip makes Charles cry out, come spurting onto his shirt and Erik’s hand.

*

The two of them never go back to the drinking game, but each of them has a smile on their face in bed a few hours later.

*

>   
> 
> 
> **Charles/Erik, Happily Ever After**
> 
> The kink meme brings Charles and Erik closer together.

Erik smiles at the prompt and knows that the kink meme will be happy to supply a myriad of ways for it to happen.

Only, this time, Erik knows the real answer.

*

“Problem solved?” the man with the tweed asks when the blue box appears in front of the brownstone five weeks later.

“We think so.” Erik and Charles say in unison.

“Excellent. Now, let’s get you back to 1962.”

**Author's Note:**

> All of my respect and admiration to any fic vaguely mentioned in this work. It would have taken an entire volume of text to include everything, but I hope that if the authors of those few referenced fics are here, they know how much those stories sit with other fans of the kink meme.


End file.
